Many charitable and nonprofit organizations, or NPOs, contribute to society by providing help and support to those in need. Individuals are the largest source of charitable giving. Conventionally, charitable organizations have relied on grassroots marketing, using telemarketing, flyer distribution, presentations/speaking engagements, among other approaches, for fundraising and engaging individuals as donors or subscribers.
There are several ways for donors to add themselves onto a charity list. Once donors add themselves onto a list, the organizers/volunteers of the charity spend countless hours aggregating donor lists, obtaining donations, and following up on promised donations, and thus, spend the better part of the year in these fundraising efforts. These efforts are not only time-consuming, but also difficult to achieve for many charitable organizations on a wider scale beyond their own localities.
Individual NPOs are often small entities that do not have the resources to engage in large-scale fundraising or advertising efforts, to accept contributions via multiple methods, or to obtain other benefits available to large organizations such as the Red Cross and the Salvation Army. While the fundraising potential of collecting small donations, or micro-donations, from large numbers of donors has proven to be tremendously effective, the infrastructure required to encourage and collect micro-donations on a scale that would make it worthwhile has not been available to most organizations.
Traditional methods of soliciting donations are costly to the non-profit, especially when the donation amount is small, and result in only a small portion of the donations actually going to charitable purposes. Moreover, many potential donors have credibility issues and are wary of giving to non-profits with which they are not familiar. In addition, these methods are often inconvenient for potential donors and may not result in donations when the potential donor might otherwise give a donation if asked at a different time. For example, if a non-profit calls asking for a donation when a person is busy or at work, a potential donor may not be inclined to donate at that time. Further, most of the conventional ways of fundraising lack automated methods for thanking the donor subsequent to the donation or providing feedback as to how the donation was utilized.
Thus, there is a need for a method and system that provides a platform to NPOs of all sizes to raise funds through wider reach. There is also a need for a system and method that will simplify aggregating donor databases and donor engagement for charities, while making donating more convenient and flexible for donors at the same time.
There is also a need for a system that allows NPOs to efficiently collect data and key metrics on typical donors, and also provide feedback on their donations.
There is also a need for a system that empowers individuals to create campaigns which can be readily published, promoted, or otherwise syndicated to a social network via mobile devices.